Weekly Web Harvest (weekly)

“Think of yourself as someone who sells aspirin. And realize that the best customer for your aspirin is someone who is in pain. Not a lot of pain. Not a migraine. Just a little.

Piaget called that pain “disequilibrium.” Neo-Piagetians call it “cognitive conflict.” Guershon Harel calls it “intellectual need.” I’m calling it a headache. I’m obviously not originating this idea but I’d like to advance it some more.

One of the worst things you can do is force people who don’t feel pain to take your aspirin. They may oblige you if you have some particular kind of authority in their lives but that aspirin will feel pointless. It’ll undermine their respect for medicine in general.”

Like the SBG stuff from Shawn Cornally (think, thank, thunk). Be nice to see more of this in higher ed.

“Probably the biggest gains came after we let students start developing learning objectives based on the standards. We would actually give the students the standards and ask them, ‘What would you have to be able to do show mastery of this?’ The students themselves developed learning objectives. The key point is it became student friendly [in] language.”

“”is educational research even worse?” From my perspective, it is. Because all this is especially true of the ‘research’ published in journals of education: Read Richard Horton, editor in chief of the Lancet: “The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness. As one participant put it, ‘poor methods get results’ . . .” And not, contra Campbell Collaboration, this isn’t going to be fixed by turning education research into pseudo-medical research. We need to re-evaluate what we’re trying to accomplish with research publication (hint: something not related to ‘tenure’ and ‘funding’).”

“Arguably Fraser’s most famous performance, Museum Highlights (1989) involved Fraser posing as a Museum tour guide at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1989 under the pseudonym of Jane Castleton.[7] During the performance, Fraser led a tour through the museum describing it in verbose and overly dramatic terms to her chagrined tour group. For example, in describing a common water fountain Fraser proclaims “a work of astonishing economy and monumentality … it boldly contrasts with the severe and highly stylized productions of this form!” Upon entering the museum cafeteria: “This room represents the heyday of colonial art in Philadelphia on the eve of the Revolution, and must be regarded as one of the very finest of all American rooms.”[7] The tour is based on a script culled from an array of sources: Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment; a 1969 anthology of essays called “On Understanding Poverty”; and a 1987 article in The New York Times with the headline “Salad and Seurat: Sampling the Fare at Museums.”[8]

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